European Minorities win Minority SafePack case against the European Commission

03.02.2017 - Press releases

Today, the EU Court delivered the judgment in the case of the Minority SafePack Initiative against the European Commission. The Court held that the decision taken by the European Commission in September 2013 to reject the registration of the Minority SafePack Initiative was unlawful.

FUEN President Loránt Vincze: “It is a day of victory for the autochthonous national minorities in Europe. We are not yet at the end of our journey, but we had an important victory. The Court’s decision will oblige the European Commission to take the initiative of the European minorities very seriously. The minority solidarity and the well prepared work proved its worth. The partnership created under the umbrella of the FUEN, led to this great success. Thanks for all of our supporters! Our work continues tomorrow.”

“The judgment of today shows that the European minorities were right to fight the rejection decision in court. It shows that the European Commission was wrong to state that it had no competences, without entering into a detailed analysis of the proposals contained in the Minority SafePack Initiative. Now the European Commission will have to redo their homework and take a new decision”, says FUEN legal advisor Frank de Boer.

According to the judges, the Commission failed to comply with its obligations to state reasons by not indicating which of the measures contained in the proposed initiative did not come within its competence and by not setting out the reasons in support of that conclusion.

As a result, the citizen’s committee was not able to identify the proposals set out in the annex of the Minority SafePack Initiative which, according to the Commission, fell outside the competences of the Commission, or to know the reasons which led to that assessment. The citizen’s committee was therefore prevented from challenging that assessment. A possible re-introduction of a new proposal, taking account of the Commission’s objections, was therefore also seriously compromised.

As a consequence, the objectives of the European citizens’ initiative to encourage participation by citizens in democratic life and to make the EU more accessible, was seriously frustrated.

For the former FUEN President Hans Heinrich Hansen, who is the chair of the citizens’ committee for the Minority SafePack Initiative, “this is a great step for FUEN and the European minorities. It is an important step for citizens’ involvement in the European Union.”